


Of Forests

by Michelle_A_Emerlind



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alexandria Safe-Zone, M/M, Pre-Slash, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:41:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelle_A_Emerlind/pseuds/Michelle_A_Emerlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl misses Georgia. But he has a reason to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Forests

**Author's Note:**

> Also known as The Fic In Which Daryl Doesn't Shoot a Deer. Because Skari and I were in Hallmark and she was pointing out all the Christmas ornament deer that Christmas ornament Daryl would shoot. >:(

Christmas came to Alexandria far quicker than expected. The snows fell on top of them in huge, driving heaps and Daryl had never _seen_ so much white in his whole entire life. For those first few days when the powder came down heavy in slants, he bitched up one side and down the other about how they should have stayed in motherfucking _Georgia_ because what the hell was this? But gradually, he realized he couldn’t fight it and swapped out leather vests for bubble coats and his sunglasses for those stupid looking ski masks.

And then someone--he thought it was Olivia--had made the remarkable announcement that she’d been keeping up with the calendar and guess what next week was! _Bullshit_ , Daryl had thought to himself with his heaviest eyeroll.

But that didn’t stop the horrific discovery that he was going to have to _help decorate the town tree_ if he didn’t find himself some other damn useful activity. So in a storm of righteous fury heavier than any blizzard, Daryl had slapped on a pair of extra fluffy mittens, tugged down his ski mask, and disappeared rapidly outside of the city limits, crossbow on his back and relief to be missing the stringing of lights in his heart.

He wandered aimlessly at first, without any real purpose. The woods outside were quiet, the snow having stopped and laid itself down into a final resting place of crystal hills and valleys. He grumbled as he walked, staring at the snow piles that were heavier on some sides of tree trunks than others. No walkers were about--he figured they’d probably all be frozen at this point. So all it was was Daryl and the soft, afternoon slants of the sun through pine trees heavy with snow.

It was so _peaceful_ out here. So natural and light. Daryl sighed in happiness and stopped his grumblings, let himself be swept away with the beauty of a forest that, granted, wasn’t Georgia, but was something. He lifted his feet as carefully as he could, made prints in the snow with as much care and delicacy as he could muster. He poured everything into that motion, making his body as soft as the bark and the stone around him.

And it paid off. He blended in. He became more than a man walking through the forest. He _became_ the forest, as it was always so easy for him to do. Nothing resonated with him more than this--he was never a man in his home, never with his parents, never with Merle. And certainly not in Alexandria, either. But here, in the thick and beautiful woods that had stood through a civilization that burned and died in the instant of one hot and wicked summer, he was human. And the forest recognized him as so.

The first sound he noticed was a soft snort and looking up, he saw the flash of brown tinged with snowflakes on the deer’s pelt. It had its head down, rooting through the layers, and it was beautiful. And big. And for winter, fat.

Daryl kept his muscles loose--to tense would be to give away his presence. Carefully, as if he was just another gust of wind sparking through the trees, he lifted his crossbow from his back and pointed. The town had food, sure, but it was all canned. All processed and nothing real. And if they were going to have Christmas, _actual_ Christmas, they could all do with a little real meat. Holidays were supposed to be for sharing of food, not rationing, and one crossbow bolt would do it. He was nothing if not a provider.

But the deer. That _deer_ , just standing there, a perfect part of it all...fuck. Fuck it, Daryl couldn’t do it. He sighed in resignation and lowered the bow, stared at the deer as it lifted its head and meandered to another spot and then eventually away. If this was any other day, Daryl thought...but it wasn’t. It was today. And he had stepped into these woods with a kind of authority, a presence that said _I am with you_ , not _I take from you_.

He sighed into the cold air and turned, lifted his ski mask so he could really stare back at the buildings that rose here and there if you squinted far enough to see through the branches. Alexandria. _Alexandria_. The home of civilization, the seat of it, bigger now than Rome or Babylon or Ur. Higher than anything Daryl had ever known.

For one second, one brief flint of time, Daryl considered running. He had all he needed--the weapon in his hand, the soundness of his feet. If he fit here, if here was his place, why not go? Why not head back to the land his heart pounded for--the deep, hot wash of a summer in the pine, the jagged coastlines, and the thrum of _Georgia, Georgia, Georgia_?

But then…

One thought crosses his mind. One image, clear and white and true. Rick, standing at the town Christmas tree, holding Judith in his arms, her hands reaching grubbily for the light strings, trying to catch the little sparks of green and red and yellow. Rick’s eyes, blue like Dixie blue, his chin strong like southern strong. And Daryl knows where he belongs. And Daryl knows who he is.

 


End file.
